India’s Sports Minister Manohar Singh Gill has likened cricket’s Twenty20 thrash “as a spectacle like a bullfight” and that football in India should not just envy cricket, but should try to learn from it.
Responding to questions in the September issue of FIFA World magazine, Mr. Gill has said cricket of course is still immensely popular, but it is not about its historical popularity, but also how the sport has embraced change and used the television to further strengthen its grip on the Indian people.
Offering his insight on the popularity of cricket in India and it as a consequence impeding the growth of football, Mr. Gill has said: “Some of the quicker formats that have been introduced in the game have really turned the sport into spectacle like a bullfight, and a slow-motion camera work they use today can make a routine catch look like magic.”
On his recent visit to the FIFA HQ in Zurich, Mr. Gill expressed that because football is a people’s game, a game that can be played anywhere and on any surface, all you need is to give a ball to a village and they can play forever.
He also told FIFA World that he has launched sports promotion at a local level in 600,000 villages to see how it can make a real difference in rural India.
With regard to India’s low position in the FIFA rankings, the Indian sports minister has said there is certainly plenty of frustration and that there are many people of his own generation who remember India reaching the semi-finals of the Olympics in 1956, but wonder why India cannot achieve such results anymore.
“Historically, football has always found great talent in some of the world’s poorest regions. Just look at the players who have come out of the slums of Brazil. You think we do not have our own Peles in India? I am sure that we do, but they have not yet been given a ball.”
